Some weeks ago it was reported that a committee of civil servants was set up by President Muhammadu Buhari to look into the mode of setting up a new airline. One of the ostensible reasons for such a venture is that it will create jobs. I suppose the old argument of national airline carrying our national flag is like a national anthem one of the paraphernalia of a state must also have been made. Before our president is pushed into embarking on such a venture, I plead that the committee be dissolved with immediate effect. A national airline should be the least of our worries in the face of dwindling national income and the pressing needs of security and physical needs of our country. We must learn from our recent history. We once had Nigerian Airways and national shipping line among other national enterprises which were run down and run bankrupt by our people. The question to ask is what has changed in the attitude and orientation of Nigerians to give us the impression that if we establish a new airline the outcome will be different? It is only a mad man who keeps doing things the same way and expects a different outcome. The very week we were contemplating establishing a new airline, Air France laid off 2,000 of its staff to remain trim and in business. So those advising that we will create jobs with this new air line better come up with another reason. The other reason adduced for this venture is that it will conserve foreign reserves.
There is no prove it will do such a thing. Even if we have our own airline, a preponderance of its operation will be in foreign exchange. Besides are we going to decree that all Nigerians must fly the airline? Government officials can be compelled to do so but not the average Nigerian who is spending his or her own money. If government is interested in participating in the aviation industry, it should buy into Arik Airline for example, while leaving the day to day running in the hands of private entrepreneurs. By so doing, this existing company would have its scope expanded so that it can cover not just the whole country but also maintain presence in key capitals of the world.
I have no problem with state intervention in the economy but running airlines should not be on the list of state intervention when we have the wide field of agriculture untouched. I will like to see huge state plantations of cocoa, cashew, rubber, palm oil, groundnuts, soya, rice, cotton, cassava, maize, yams, plantains, as well as state fisheries producing all kinds of fishes, shrimps and prawns for export. Mechanization of agriculture is the way forward and not the back-breaking cutlass and hoes agriculture that our ancestors invented centuries ago and which we dumbly carry on with. By investing in agriculture on a massive scale, we will solve the problem of poor human nutrition and give jobs to our people to do and also put money in their pockets. Poor nutrition damages the brains of children thus depriving us our own future Albert Einsteins.
Four percent of American population is currently feeding the whole world through mechanization and addition of value to their agricultural produce. This is the way to go for serious approach to solving our dependence on hydrocarbon exports whose value may continue to diminish. Also being a finite product, it is inferior to renewable produce from agriculture.
For policy consistency, we cannot be privatizing government holdings in many companies while setting up a national airline. If we do that, there will be pressure for a national shipping line. There will be demand for one national something or the other which will again be avenues for graft, corruption and self enrichment. The companies will be filled by bureaucrats on quota basis who will have loyalty not to the nation but to their ethnic cohorts in an unending chain of predictable failure of such ventures. The agricultural interventions I have in mind will be based on environmental factors of availability of land, preparedness of the local people, land and soil suitability, adequacy of rainfall or availability of water for irrigation and willing participation of state and local governments with equity investment by the federal government. The upshot of what I am saying is that the government has its plate full and it should not be distracted by the issue of a national airline.
America has no national airline and even British Airways has its majority shareholders as Japanese. Many national airlines are being sold to local and international investors. If we must have a national airline, then let us go to the market and ask people to buy into the idea. If there are takers, then we will know that we are on the right track. But if not, we should perish the thought of establishing a national airline. History is not on our side.
If there is need to focus on transportation, and I believe there is a need, then what obviously comes to mind is our railways. We are the only medium income country that transports its goods on roads thus creating avoidable carnage on our roads leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths yearly. Movement of goods by road is not only inefficient and costly, it has in recent times become very dangerous for our people. Apart from needless accidents on roads that are constantly damaged by heavy and huge trailers and articulated trucks, some of them carry unlatched containers which constantly fall on innocent people smashing and killing them on the spot. This has led without success to banning them in day time to reduce the rate of mortality of the driving public on city roads. The question to ask is when are we going to join civilized mankind who places value on human life? The most relaxed and cheapest way of travel in Europe is by rail. One can move over hundreds of miles by rail reading or eating or even sleeping while doing this. We were told by the last government that it had fixed the railways from Lagos to Kano and it was about to fix the one from Port Harcourt to Maiduguri. No such thing was done. Whenever I see what goes for trains in Lagos with human beings hanging precariously on top of them like cattle going to slaughter, my heart sinks.
Surely trains have been running since the 19th century. It should be possible for us to provide decent trains to move goods and services across Nigeria. If this is one of the achievements of this government, our people will remember it for good. Trains are a common people’s and not so common people’s airline if one can say that. Since all governments should want the happiness of their people, revitalization and modernization of Nigerian railways should be this government’s priority, not setting up an airline.
NATION
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